Indeed.

I do wonder what amount of content the skeptics expect to be in MKW. Must be something along the lines of 16 new tracks and 16 classic tracks which has been the standard from Mario Kart DS through Mario Kart 8.

I doubt that Nintendo will go that route after they bumped MK8D to 96 tracks with Switch's expansion pass. I expect that they'll incorporate a much larger number of classic tracks than ever before on day 1 of MKW, not to mention that world concept itself already means that the new content will be substantially larger than only 16 tracks.

I certainly hope so, and with even more characters than Mario Kart 8 DX.

More characters is already confirmed, although it isn't a challenge to drive up the count when so many of the regular enemies of the Mario universe get added now.

One thing I noticed regarding the eight cups that are on display in MKW is that the traditional mushroom/flower/star icons aren't to be seen. It would be a bit odd if the most common icons for Mario Kart cups weren't a part of this game, although their absence does not guarantee that there will definitely be more than 32 tracks on day 1.

We are only five days away from the Direct anyway. Not much use in speculating much about all this because answers are imminent.

It's difficult to find specific benchmarks for the RTX 30350 laptop that show 4K DLSS performance vs 1440p native I guess it's not the sexiest GPU so didn't attract a lot of coverage), though generally the consensus seems to be that using DLSS is highly recommended for the GPU precisely because of it's underwhelming specs...

Here's Cyberpunk benchmarks using DLSS on a RTX 3050 (desktop version, obvs a bit more powerful). It shows a significant increase in frame rates when using DLSS no matter the resolution.

I'm admittedly no expert but in what scenario would it not be beneficial to use DLSS? In it's recent iterations there's negligible visual degradation/artifacting unless the gulf in native vs output res is big.

For MKW, even forgetting 4K DLSS Performance, why would it not be better to run the game at 1440p DLSS balanced (1080p internal) than native 1440p, then free up headroom for upping environmental density or whatever? Genuine question.

If I remember correctly TOTK used FSR on S1... If S1 can handle upscaling surely S2 should find it a breeze.

Can you show an example where any GPU has worse performance when using DLSS vs native? (again, genuine question, trying to figure all of this stuff out)

Could it be Nintendo just being Nintendo & inexplicably ignoring the feature, just like AA?

It's difficult to find specific benchmarks for the RTX 30350 laptop that show 4K DLSS performance vs 1440p native I guess it's not the sexiest GPU so didn't attract a lot of coverage), though generally the consensus seems to be that using DLSS is highly recommended for the GPU precisely because of it's underwhelming specs...

Here's Cyberpunk benchmarks using DLSS on a RTX 3050 (desktop version, obvs a bit more powerful). It shows a significant increase in frame rates when using DLSS no matter the resolution.

I'm admittedly no expert but in what scenario would it not be beneficial to use DLSS? In it's recent iterations there's negligible visual degradation/artifacting unless the gulf in native vs output res is big.

For MKW, even forgetting 4K DLSS Performance, why would it not be better to run the game at 1440p DLSS balanced (1080p internal) than native 1440p, then free up headroom for upping environmental density or whatever? Genuine question.

If I remember correctly TOTK used FSR on S1... If S1 can handle upscaling surely S2 should find it a breeze.

Can you show an example where any GPU has worse performance when using DLSS vs native? (again, genuine question, trying to figure all of this stuff out)

Could it be Nintendo just being Nintendo & inexplicably ignoring the feature, just like AA?

The video you posted shows slightly worse performance with 4K DLSS-Balanced than 1440p native. Though dropping DLSS to performance mode would likely make it run just as well.

But that video is an RTX 3050 8GB desktop card which has 80 tensor cores compared to the 64 in the 3050 mobile, and the 64 believed to be in the Switch 2. So it will be faster at upscaling with DLSS.

My point was only that 4k using DLSS may run worse than native 1440p, not that using DLSS in some form wouldn't result in better performance for an equivalent or better image quality.

Using DLSS for 1440p instead of running native 1440p would leave them more GPU power on the table for other areas but if they have the power for what they want to accomplish there's no need.

Though a lot of Nintendo games would benefit from using DLSS as the upscaling process performs anti-aliasing which is something a lot of Nintendo titles don't even attempt to do, as you mentioned, and it's been shown that using DLSS to upscale to a resolution can result in better image quality than just running that resolution natively.

So I think there probably is a place for DLSS in Mario Kart that would make sense and be an improvement but at the end of the day 1440p60 is very respectable.

Whether they tested DLSS and decided not to use it, or didn't even consider using it, only Nintendo knows.

Why are so many people eager for 120 fps? Is 60 fps not enough or something?

Appreciate the info.

I guess I'm just a bit puzzled that from what we've seen so far Nintendo seems uninterested in using DLSS (according to DF none of the 1st party footage shows evidence of DLSS).

It's of course early days and way too early to draw conclusions so we'll see.

MK8 on Wii U was a showcase for the system and by all accounts pushed it near it's limits, whereas MKW, by virtue of not harnessing DLSS is not. MKW looks nice but it could def look better. They've had forever to develop it so I just find it a bit perplexing...

It's difficult to find specific benchmarks for the RTX 30350 laptop that show 4K DLSS performance vs 1440p native I guess it's not the sexiest GPU so didn't attract a lot of coverage), though generally the consensus seems to be that using DLSS is highly recommended for the GPU precisely because of it's underwhelming specs...

Here's Cyberpunk benchmarks using DLSS on a RTX 3050 (desktop version, obvs a bit more powerful). It shows a significant increase in frame rates when using DLSS no matter the resolution.

I'm admittedly no expert but in what scenario would it not be beneficial to use DLSS? In it's recent iterations there's negligible visual degradation/artifacting unless the gulf in native vs output res is big.

For MKW, even forgetting 4K DLSS Performance, why would it not be better to run the game at 1440p DLSS balanced (1080p internal) than native 1440p, then free up headroom for upping environmental density or whatever? Genuine question.

If I remember correctly TOTK used FSR on S1... If S1 can handle upscaling surely S2 should find it a breeze.

Can you show an example where any GPU has worse performance when using DLSS vs native? (again, genuine question, trying to figure all of this stuff out)

Could it be Nintendo just being Nintendo & inexplicably ignoring the feature, just like AA?